Fox Immortal's Blessed Land, underground cavern.
The Blood Lingzhi forest had been spreading and growing, expanding to roughly fifty mu in area before anyone had noticed.
At the heart of the Blood Lingzhi forest, the dark red blood-light it emanated had now been pushed aside by a brilliant, multifaceted halo of wisdom.
At this moment, Fang Yuan sat cross-legged within the halo of wisdom, eyes closed.
His expression was calm, like a sculpture, yet inside his mind, countless thoughts rose and fell like bolts of lightning, colliding with one another in a frenzy as fierce as a meteor shower or a volcanic eruption.
A muffled groan.
Fang Yuan's body trembled slightly. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
The storm of thoughts inside his mind ground to a sudden halt.
He furrowed his brow and sank into contemplation in silence.
Two streaks of blood trickled slowly from his nostrils.
The blood of an Immortal Zombie was a sickly green, utterly devoid of warmth — ice cold.
Fang Yuan wiped the two trails of nosebleed away without the slightest concern, evaluating internally: "It seems this new Gu formation I created still has quite a few flaws."
Ever since he had become a Grandmaster of Wisdom Path, he had been flooded with countless inspirations. He had also developed many entirely new ideas on how to utilize Zhi Hui Gu.
This Gu formation was a work he had created by himself not long ago.
Previously, his Wisdom Path attainment had been insufficient, and he could only make direct use of the wisdom halo. Now, with this Gu formation, he could intensify the process of thought collision within his mind.
Though it could not improve the effectiveness of his calculations and reasoning, it saved a considerable amount of time.
Zhi Hui Gu was a Ninth Transformation Gu. As a mere Sixth Transformation Immortal Zombie, Fang Yuan could barely make use of the wisdom halo at all. This Gu formation could already be considered a rare and precious breakthrough.
Moreover, this Gu formation was no longer its initial version — it had been revised several times over.
The earlier iterations had displayed all manner of defects. On one occasion, the Gu formation had even exploded directly inside Fang Yuan's body.
This time, when using it, Fang Yuan suffered backlash from the formation and sustained minor injuries.
"The Gu formation still needs revision… but that isn't the crux of the matter. The real problem now is the improvement of the Star Thought Immortal Gu recipe."
Fang Yuan's brow furrowed deeper and deeper.
Many days ago, when Burning Sky Demoness had conscripted Fang Yuan, he had seized the opportunity to request the refinement of the Star Thought Immortal Gu.
The two sides had reached an agreement. Burning Sky Demoness agreed to sponsor Fang Yuan, and she was remarkably generous about it — she proactively sourced all the various materials needed for refining the Star Thought Immortal Gu and sent them over via Bu Dan.
These immortal materials were extraordinarily rare. Not only did they cost a fortune, but if Fang Yuan had to gather them himself, it would certainly have consumed a vast amount of time.
Only Burning Sky Demoness, relying on her Eighth Transformation cultivation and her status at the Zombie Alliance headquarters — as well as her profound reserves — had been able to help Fang Yuan collect a full three sets of immortal materials in such a short time.
With everything in hand, Fang Yuan naturally set about refining the Gu.
However, he had attempted it three times in succession, and all three had ended in failure.
Fang Yuan had long been psychologically prepared for failure.
After all, this time he did not have the Success Dao Marks obtained from a Gu refinement competition to assist him. He could only rely on skill and luck.
"Rely on skill" — that much was understandable. But why "rely on luck"?
Take the Star Thought Immortal Gu, for instance. During the refinement process, there was one step that required two immortal materials. One was the Azure Flame White Bone, and the other was the Green Mayfly Water Lotus.
The former was a Fire Path immortal material, and the latter a Water Path immortal material.
At this stage, both materials needed to be processed simultaneously. Fire and water would merge together to form a single batch of crystal-clear primordial liquid.
But this step was exceedingly difficult.
The Azure Flame White Bone bore Fire Path Dao Marks, while the Green Mayfly Water Lotus bore Water Path Dao Marks. To successfully process them into crystal-clear primordial liquid, the quantity of Fire Path Dao Marks and Water Path Dao Marks had to be perfectly equal. Even if they weren't exactly equal, the difference had to be vanishingly small. Only then would fire and water cancel each other out. If one side's quantity exceeded the other beyond the permissible limit, the resulting primordial liquid would be hopelessly turbid.
Such turbid primordial liquid was unusable.
The problem was that primordial liquid could not be stored for long — it had to be prepared on the spot as needed. Fang Yuan possessed no Time Path Immortal Gu to freeze the liquid in time. This meant he had to process the immortal materials and synthesize the primordial liquid in real time during the Gu refinement process.
And the differences between Dao Marks were infinitesimally fine. Even with all his ingenuity and every means at his disposal, Fang Yuan could not perceive every detail — he could only estimate an approximation.
Fang Yuan was not a Fire Path or Water Path Immortal Gu Master. He had already pushed his investigative abilities to their absolute limit.
Precisely because of this, the Gu recipe strictly specified the age of the Green Mayfly Water Lotus and the precise quantity of Azure Flame White Bone.
But even so, Green Mayfly Water lotuses of the same age would still differ in the number of Water Path Dao Marks depending on the quality of their growing environment. If Azure Flame White Bone was damaged, it too would result in a fading of its Dao Marks.
All of the refinement materials had passed Fang Yuan's meticulous inspection and met the standards set by the Gu recipe.
But when it came to actual execution, failure was inevitable.
Producing crystal-clear primordial liquid inevitably involved an element of luck.
And throughout the entire process of refining the Immortal Gu, examples like this fire-and-water fusion were everywhere.
Getting it right once, succeeding twice — that wasn't difficult. The difficulty lay in the fact that every single one of these instances had to succeed.